1. Stocking Collection (Finland)2. Why is it called the Enchanted Highway? (California)3. How many socks do professional football players wear? (UK)4. Kim Mitchell Girlfriend (U.S. Midwest)5. Sex in High Socks (Poland)

August 20, 2007

I don't know that it's worldwide news, but I bet there are few North Americans, at least, who haven't heard about this $13-million-a-year player and his transgressions in the past week.

The gentleman below, giving the 1-2 to the media or something in a file picture, is quarterback Michael Vick of the Atlanta Falcons, the highest-paid player in the National Football League.

In a nutshell, he agreed this week to plead guilty to charges that he operated and funded an illegal dogfighting scheme in the U.S., one in which scores of dogs were killed while fighting or killed afterwards because they failed to win.

People gambled on the outcome of these fights.

Vick is to be sentenced next week, I believe, and he's expected to receive between 12-18 months in prison, although he could face more charges. His pro football career is all but over. He's only 27.

If you need more information on the basics, just Google his name. I believe, though, that's all I need to say. There's a media circus going on about him right now and it's been almost impossible to avoid the cries of outrage.

And I believe outrage is the appropriate reaction to have. But I think a lot of history and context has been missed in all of this, and I think Vick has become a convenient lightning rod for anger that isn't all placed in the right direction.

OK, so you have the basics, if you didn't know them already. This whole thing reeks of the worst of humanity and it makes most peoples' blood boil...or it makes them cry and wonder how people can be so cruel.

There have been books written about dogfighting and the odd movie too.

But for the most part, this is one of those activities that bubble under society's surface, there but not really there, barely acknowledged, something we want to ignore.

My problem with the whole Vick thing is that everyone and their dog, pardon the expression, is screaming all this outrage about this now -- just because of who Michael Vick is and what he is, and that's the way politics and analysts and the media are.

If Joe Blow in Atlanta had been similarly raided and charged, this wouldn't be out there.

Dogfighting would be just as beyond our conscience and our morality as it had been until he was charged.

There's no context being provided, no deeper thought being given to what this is really all about.

Because right now it's all about the feeding frenzy by the justice departments, the police, the animal rights groups and the moralists coming out of the woodwork to feast on a rich, exposed celebrity who dun wrong.

As far as I can tell, dogfighting is a part of some element of American culture, the same as it and many other ugly things are a part of every culture despite their horrid, brutal, unacceptable and in many cases illegal status.

But they still exist, either because the politicians and law enforcement types haven't the resources to put a stop to them or because they know it would be impossible to do so anyway.

And in many cases those things exist for different reasons, usually economic but also based on backwards beliefs or prejudices, and they're usually allowed to exist (even though illegal) and even encouraged, in every culture, race, colour, you name it.

Do any of these things come to mind?

Ku Klux Klan

Cockfighting

Prostitution

Drug smuggling

Bullfighting in Spain (this week they announced it would no longer be shown on TV in Spain because it was "too violent for children"; how can anyone condone THIS activity and consider it any different from dogfighting?)

Child porn

Sexual predators (released on bail continually, only to reoffend)

The baby seal hunt off Canada's Newfoundland coast (they club these infant animals to death for their fur, an activity not only supported by Canada but defended by Canada. How gruesome is THAT?)

Japan, Norway and other nations' killing of whales

These are only a few realities of different cultures that are either completely legal in some countries or are illegal but are not nearly as vigorously monitored or enforced by the law as they need to be or, in fact, in abstentia condoned by those governments.

And there are so many more that are part of the underbelly of every society. They exist. People do them, for whatever reasons, even though the general population would never accept them in a civil society if they had the choice.

But here we are, looking at part of the American underbelly, and this thing called dogfighting. And the reason we are is because a man named Michael Vick is involved, it's the only reason, as if it's all on him and we need to hate him.

Here are facts, people. Let's try to look beyond Vick to the issue of dogfighting itself. Let's tear ourselves, for a brief moment, away from the feeding frenzy. Vick should be a target, but not the only target.

The brief history of dogfighting is that it's believed to have started in ancient Rome as a form of entertainment. It became all the rage in England for 600 years -- reaching its apex in the 1600s -- but was outlawed in 1835 in the UK.

Like everything else, though, it migrated with the settlers...to the U.S. and many other countries. One estimate now pegs the number of people involved in dogfighting in the U.S. alone at 40,000.

Dogfighting is perfectly legal and a popular "sport" in Afghanistan and many other places in the world. It was a popular pastime in Japan and is widespread and popular in several South American countries. It's illegal in Russia but widely practised.

Few places on the planet have not at one time, if not now, condoned it and supported it or done little to curb its growth and popularity.

In the American Deep South, particularly, it seems to flourish under the radar. Most states have outlawed it but some have made dogfighting or attending matches only a misdemeanor rather than a felony.

And my research leads me to wonder how often police and other enforcement agencies pay much attention to it and provide many resources to ensure it doesn't happen or that offenders are caught and punished.

At least, until a perpetrator of Michael Vick's stature shows up. Then they're all over it and it's time to show the world just how the justice system is getting everyone, from the top of the food chain down to the bottom.

August 19, 2007

THIS GIGANTIC BUT GENTLE SOUL IS A PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL PLAYER ON THE TEAM I OFTEN WRITE ABOUT FOR THE NEWSPAPER I WORK FOR.

Wary of his name being googled and this post being discovered, I am only calling him Dan.

He's a 6-foot-6, 313-pound offensive lineman and one of the nicest guys you'd want to meet. He's from Florida. And he eats like a horse.

Last season, he blew out his knee.

That is, he was hit in such a way that all of the supportive cartilage and ligaments that allow the knee to function as it does were severed, leaving the joint virtually useless.

He was diagnosed with a torn anterior cruciate ligament and a torn medial collateral ligament, plus he had severe damage to his meniscus, another critical component of a joint that in his case must stand up to intense physical pressure.

He was gone for the season from an injury that, in later interviews with me, he described as "O-line killers" -- an injury that until recently, ended the careers of offensive linemen but also running backs and anyone else.

My interest in his injury was natural. Because the same type of injury happened to me around 1980, when I was on a 4 1/2-month overland bus trip from England to India and back.

I was playing Frisbee football on a hill in Turkey -- somewhere around Ankara, if I remember correctly -- when I was running as fast as I could and jumped up in the air to catch the Frisbee.

I caught the disc in mid-air but when I came down, my right leg landed in a gopher hole or something.

The rest of my body kept going sideways. Because I was running so fast sideways, I blew out my knee.

It was the first serious sports injury I had ever suffered.

The knee swelled up to about three times its normal size. I knew something was wrong but at the time, I figured I was invincible.

We applied ice to it, the swelling went down and I continued on the trip.

Several months later, back home, I had it checked out. I was told there was a slight meniscus tear and I had surgery to repair it.

But the problem didn't go away. My knee could bend unnaturally sideways. There was no support.

I could not play sports and just dealt with it. I got married, we had our first child and my knee kept collapsing on me.

One time it slipped out on some ice and I fell with my daughter, almost hurting her.

Eventually, after two more operations, I finally had what's called a total ACL reconstruct.

They cut me open in several places near the knee.

They took cartilage from my lower thigh and used it to take the place of my ACL, wrapping it through the knee joint and fastening it to a spot below my knee with a bolt.

That procedure was about 15 years ago and I now have pretty normal support in my right knee.

So I could associate with what Dan has gone through.

Except that while I have about 12-14 inches worth of scars from the procedure I had back then, all he has from his modern arthroscopy (scoping) procedure are three little pen-width-sized holes in his knee.

Even though he had the same procedure done, more or less, the same repair for the same problem -- he has had the benefit of drastically improved technology, knowledge, surgical know-how and recovery strategies.

His ACL is more solid than mine is now, but his is solidified by cartilage taken from a cadavre.

He's back playing and performing for the top offence in the league now, although he has to wear a knee brace.

Me?

I'm two decades older than him and my big physical activity will be playing in a benefit softball game next week for a former National Hockey League player, longing for those days when my body could do anything.

Dan and I became pretty good buds talking about our respective injuries and how drastically things have changed in medicine.

So I did a big story on it and the package finally ran in our paper this this past week.

And here are some of the pictures of the two of us together taken last season after his surgery, pictures that were never used for the story, but which I think illustrate how far sports medicine has come...

I don't know whether you can click on these pix to make them larger.

But Dan's thumb and forefinger are pointing at the little holes he has from the arthroscopic surgery he had, while my fingers are pointing at some of my scars from the under-the-knife procedures I had.

You might also be able to see a long scar running down the front of my shin, just below my knee joint. The bump you see at the bottom of that scar is the screw that's holding my knee together.

So I guess the moral of this story is that while he has much bigger calves, thighs, hands and probably most any other thing you can think of, my scars are a whole lot bigger than his.

So I should get a lot more of your sympathy.

And besides, he said feeling very small and old, it's all how you use it.

August 17, 2007

However -- and I hope I'm the only blogger who has ever done two consecutive posts on socks, in which case I should be in the Guiness World Book of Blogging Records -- this IS DEFINITELY about those cloth things we wear to cover our feet.

I have actually blogged before about socks.

I mentioned them in my first annual spring male fashion series, where I touched on such critical issues as wearing socks and sandals, which is not the fashion faux pas women say it is.

Although I, personally, never do that, of course.

No, this post is all about socks and male virility which I suppose, in some way, is related to sex.

And in this case, my OWN virility, which was questioned by a co-worker this week but defended by another co-worker after my fashion sense and, therefore, my entire reason for being, was attacked by my daughter.

Let me explain.

My daughter, in the past year (I think it was last summer), looking at the supposedly far from cool calf-high white socks that I always used to wear with shorts in the summer, uttered this crushing comment:

I went and tickled her into submission and dismissed her words, then promptly went out and bought about 18 pairs of anklets, some with the Nike swoosh so I could look super hip and give Nike free advertising.

I've worn these socks now all summer, figuring I was the hippest, baddest 51-year-old cool guy wannabe on the planet.

Until this week, when I was out having a cigarette at the side of the building at my workplace, where they herd all us smokers to hide us from the unwashed, pure masses who are going to die tomorrow from our second-hand smoke.

The conversation went something like this:

(DISCLAIMER: the following is a direct quote and is not intended to offend anyone of any sexual orientation.

The word used was said in a spirit of the measure of a man's level of masculinity or femininity only, and in humour):

My boss, hopelessly out of his league: "Uhh...my son wears those all the time."

Me: "WHAT??!!"

Woman 2: "Everyone wears them. They're not gay."

Woman 1: "Yes they are. And you buy his underwear for him too?" Woman 2: "Yeah, but...(to my boss): Do YOU wear anklets? Do you even wear socks? And what about on the days you wear your cowboy boots?"

My boss (pulling up pant leg to reveal calf-high socks with his golf shoes): "No. Never would. But my son does. And so do all his friends. I think you're in trouble here, guy. I'm staying out of this."

Me: "Wait a minute. My daughter told me I looked like a nerd in the socks I used to wear. Now I'm cool. I'm hip. I'm happenin'. And now you're tellin' me they're GAY?"

Woman 1: "They're gay. You're not gay, but your socks are."

I went home that night and contemplated this question.

The fact is, when my daughter told me I looked like a nerd and I should wear anklets, I too thought they were "gay." But all the football players I cover and know wear them.

Most other athletes I know wear them too, male and female. But most males over 50, I'd wager, don't wear anklets.

They wear thigh-high socks, Bermuda shorts and t-shirts they shouldn't be allowed to wear that just expose their mammoth pot bellies.

I do point out that while there is a specific section on anklets -- it says, excitedly, that EVERYONE should own at least a couple of pair -- the great majority of socks they display are regular-height ones.

Maybe I should be wearing these anklets? Or maybe...not...

As an enticement for my 2.3 male readers to go the link above, there's a brilliant section, with pictures, on fishnet stockings. So check it out. It's all quite mind-numbing and potentially arousing.

The variety of socks is, in fact, almost incomprehensible. It's so overwhelming that I have a headache.

But let's boil all this down to the question at hand. And in a completely unrelated thought, view the video that shows you how to fold socks, including anklets.Here's me in anklet socks and in regular socks, the kind I used to wear...what should -- WHAT CAN -- a man do?

I throw this universally pondered quandary out to the millions of people who read this blog:

August 11, 2007

I REMEMBER MANY YEARS AGO READING A BOOK TO MY KIDS AT BEDTIME. IT WAS ABOUT AN ANT AND AN ELEPHANT.

The main character was this particular ant, you see, who was unpopular with all the other ants BECAUSE ALL HE DID WAS YELL!!! He could not talk softly.

As a result, the other ants figured, he was excruciatingly annoying.

None of the other insects he tried to befriend liked him either. Because his voice was SO LOUD!!!, he scared off the grasshopper, the caterpillar and others. He alienated everybody he tried to befriend.

As usual, there was a good ending and a good message for my kids: if you speak up, even if you have to yell, you can be heard, because being heard is the most important thing and you have a place in the world.

You can be unpopular, but that can change. And even if it doesn't, being heard is the biggest thing. Everybody is important, in his or her own way.

It turned out the ant with the LOUD VOICE!!! saved the entire ant colony from death when he yelled loudly enough for a herd of oncoming, stampeding elephants to become aware of their presence when nothing else could stop them.

What does this have to do with anything?

In the past couple of weeks, Canada, which is an ant on the world stage, has made A LOT OF NOISE!!! about protecting what it claims is its sovereignty over the Northwest Passage in the vast, virtually uninhabited Arctic.

Our absolutely awful prime minister, Stephen Harper, who doesn't even come close to having a handle on issues in the parts of Canada where people actually live, has made it his mission to protect our so-called sovereignty.

The most recent announcement, only days ago, saw him go up to Resolute Bay, Nunavut, to announce the construction of a pair of multi-million-dollar military facilities within the contested waters of Canada's Arctic territory.

This came on the heels of another laughable announcement that Canada will buy some military boats to patrol "its territory" in the Arctic Archipalego.

This brief info from one news service:

"Canada's new government understands that the first principle of Arctic sovereignty is: Use it or lose it," Harper said about 600 kilometres from the magnetic North Pole. "...Canada has a real, growing, long-term presence in the Arctic."

Right.

The facilities consist of a new army training centre and a deep-sea port inside of the Northwest Passage, which is expected to provide a summer shipping route to Asia over the next few decades because of the effects of global warming and melting ice flows.

The training facility would be manned by up to 100 Canadian Forces personnel (OOOH, 100!) in Resolute Bay, while the port for navy and civilians would be located on the site of an abandoned mine in the village of Nanisivik on the north end of Baffin Island.

The context here is this:

The territory we're talking about is an ice-filled wasteland, its surface hardly navigable by anyone or anything except icebreakers (unless we're talking about subs, we can go beneath the ice...and do all the time, from Russia, the U.S. and others).

It includes 36,500 islands over 1.4 million kilometres. But it's believed to be super rich in minerals, natural gas and oil. And do you think that might just have a little bit to do with why anyone actually cares?

Canada has always claimed this land as its own, even as it has ignored the smattering of Inuit and others who inhabit the area. And other countries like the U.S., Russia, Denmark, Japan and the like have disputed Canada's claim.

Russia recently planted its flag on the seabed at the North Pole, essentially laughing in Canada's face. It knows Canada couldn't defend the entire country from an invasion by the Pope's Swiss guard at the Vatican, let alone any other real military threat.

One scholar, Stephen Clarkson, wrote not too long ago about Canada and its so-called sovereignty:

"[I]n the absence of political testosterone, the state could legitimately be considered castrated, a harem keeper for its global and continental masters, but without any vital fluids to call its own."

Even little Denmark is defying Canada's claim on the Arctic. The Danes claim Greenland, which isn't far away, and they want to claim a big part of the Arctic north of Canada, too. In any event, they want free passage to Asia.

And if global warming does continue to melt the Arctic ice, that would open it up more to exploration for oil, gas and minerals...who cares if New Orleans and all other coastal cities on the planet are destroyed?

There are many more issues here and history. I'm simplifying all of it, I know.

But at the core of it is that Canada is that ant, trying to scream out loud, but in this case it's barely audible. It doesn't have the vocal chords, the lung power or the balls, to hold off all the elephants.

I love our vastness, our resources, our untamed lands. But we don't have the power or the numbers or the resources or anything else to make such claims.

We don't have the strength to climb to the top of the hill and dare another kid to knock us off. We can pump our chest up and say what we want. We can try to assert what we can't protect. But the elephants know.

August 8, 2007

I HAVE ALWAYS LAUGHED UNCONTROLLABLY WHEN SOMEONE MENTIONS THE WORD, "POOP."

AND I HAVE DONE SO ONLY BECAUSE THE WORD AND THE PHYSICAL ACTION ITSELF ARE SO "HUSH-HUSH." OR, MORE ACCURATELY, FLUSH-FLUSH.

WE'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO TALK ABOUT STUFF LIKE THAT, A PHYSICAL FUNCTION THAT WE ALL MUST PERFORM, USUALLY EVERY DAY. IT'S VERBOTEN.

IT'S OFF-LIMITS.

Well, no it isn't.In the spirit of Blazing Saddles and other endearing comedies that at least ventured into the realm of farting and other physically necessary functions that we politely pretend never happen, I'm venturing into the void, so to speak.So my question here today is, What do you scoop while you poop? What do you read while you're in need? How do you pass the time while your bowels are sublime and doing their thing in rhyme?What transpires while your expire? What knowledge awaits while you exfoliate? What can you learn while your bowels churn?These are a few of my favourite readings while I'm on the Throne and all alone...

Us totally buff guys must keep up on our knowledge, of course (HA!)

I have not lost my gut, have not sculpted my body, do not have six-pack abs and do not have better sex. But I can dream, can't I?

The world of Farcebook

I have kids on Farcebook. And friends. And a fiance. And all are very intelligent human beings.

I am on Farcebook myself. But it is the TV of life now. It is the simple, devoid of ideas, unintelligent way of humans communicating. I am not saying people who don't Farcebook are any more intelligent, necessarily.

They are people who , I believe, are like newspaper readers are to television viewers --people of more depth -- and I mean that with no disrespect.

And they are people who need and want more depth, not less, in their lives.